ly its mother.

To many minds this is appalling. But let us look it candidly in the face
and see its full bearing. We will recall in the first place, the
scientific law, no life but from proceeding life. Let us recollect next
the dictum of mechanics, no fountain can rise higher than its source.
The natural corollary and consequence of this is "no evolution without
preceding involution." If mind and consciousness come out of nature,
they must first have been enveloped in nature, resident within its
depths. If the spirit within our hearts is one with the force that stirs
the sense and grows in the plant, then that sea of energy that envelops
us is also spirit.

When we come to examine the idea of force, we find that there is only
one form in which we get any direct knowledge of it, only one place in
which we come into contact with it, and that is, in our own conscious
experiences, in the efforts of our own will. According to the scientific
rule, always to interpret the unknown by the known, not the known by the
unknown, it is only the rational conclusion that force elsewhere is also
will. Through this personal experience of energy, we get, just once, an
inside view of the universal energy, and we find it to be spiritual; the
will-force of the Infinite Spirit dwelling in all things. That the
encircling force of the universe can best be understood through the
analogy of our own sense of effort, and therefore is a form of will, of
Spirit, is a conclusion endorsed by the most eminent men of
science,--Huxley, Herschel, Carpenter, and Le Conte. There is,
therefore, no real efficient force but Spirit. The various energies of
nature are but different forms or special currents of this Omnipresent
Divine Power; the laws of nature, but the wise and regular habits of
this active Divine will; physical phenomena but projections of God's
thought on the screen of space; and Evolution but the slow, gradual
unrolling of the panorama on the great stage of time.

In geology and paleontology, as is admitted, Evolution is not directly
observed, but only inferred. The process is too slow; the stage too
grand for direct observation. There is one field and only one where it
has been directly observed. This is in the case of domestic animals and
plants under man's charge. Now as here, where alone we see Evolution
going on, it is under the guidance of superintending mind, it is a
justifiable inference that in nature, also, it goes on under simila